Chains of the Captive
by BrokenKestral
Summary: A soldier bound to Tash tries to destroy the joy that Aslan gives his followers. Rated for the cruelty that exists in Tash's temple.


Disclaimer and warning: neither the world nor the god Tash are mine; neither is the idea that it is often love, and the joy it creates, that breaks the chains and sets the captive free.

Warning: this does take place at the temple of Tash, and cruelty runs rampant there. Please be warned.

Chains of the Captive

The beginning link of the chain was forged when I first saw him, gold and curved and terrifying. I knelt at the statue's feet, a boy of ten, and swore my fealty to the great god Tash.

"Tash receives you, and renames you Tehtori. Rise, and come and serve him, for you are his now."

I was not the only boy sold to be a slave to the great temple of Tash. The priests who trained us, those working under the Tisroc (may he live forever) and his generals, showed me the irrevocable links in the chain that bound all of us to him. When we fought with scimitars, daggers, or even whips, boy against boy, then soldier against soldier, we learned to guard his temple and punish offenders. When the priests spoke, or the soldiers, or we heard the captives mocked in their metal cages, we were told of the strength of Tash or the littleness of his enemies. We were Tash's, by word, by deed, even to our thoughts—we owed him everything. There were those who served him, whom he would not destroy—and the smoking bodies of those who opposed him. It was Tash or death.

And in Tash's name, I delivered death to those who would not serve him.

First to a captive, an abomination with the chest and head of a man but the legs of a goat. Before the altar of Tash, as my rite of passage into my god's army, I drew my silver, unstained blade and took his life, offering my god his death.

I refused to see that he had eyes like a boy's. I told myself I only saw that he would not look at the great god Tash's face.

When war came, and the Tisroc (may he live forever and ever through the power of Tash) sent us across the desert to punish ones who worshipped a demon in the form of a lion, I choked on desert sand as the horses kicked it up, wiped sweat from forehead and hand from the blistering desert heat, and went forward in the name of Tash. 'Twas there I first taught those under me to punish any offender who even spoke the name of the demon lion.

The name of a demon should not have so much power. So I silenced it. Only Tash remained.

In his name we went forward, and forward, and forward, further into the accursed and yet beautiful land, killing all who saw us, killing and sometimes dying. Those who died went to Tash, and those who remained gained hill after hill. At last, by the favor of Tash, we gained the last hill, and we saw it—the sea. The blue, glorious sea, with our ships waiting for the fire signals we would send by night, and the castle of Cair Paravel.

The castle that was home to our goal.

She was a Narnian Queen, Swanwhite's great-granddaughter, and now she was Tash's captive. It was said by the ambassadors at court she had the beauty of her ancestor written in her smile.

I never saw it when I first captured her. I took her to the temple of Tash and left her as yet another offering, to decorate the temple of Tash as his helpless slave.

Tash gave me favor, and I led other raids into Narnia, till the day Tash made other purposes known, and a sword in my leg returned me to the temple where I first swore away my freedom to his service.

I was given the charge of breaking the queen—and as I walked into her cell, she looked at me and smiled.

Tash help me, it wasn't a smile I expected to see. This one—this lit her eyes and her face, as if the light that should only belong to Tash rested in the heart that gave that smile.

Gave it to an enemy.

I swore I would destroy that smile and the joy of Tash's enemy.

Forever imprisoned, blinded by the leering, cheering soldiers, chains welded permanently to her wrists, the smile should have faded—but it didn't.

And it unnerved me, when she smiled even as she cried, when joy and sorrow harmonized her face, when she, a captive, smiled as she prayed to her impotent, offensive demon god with joy. That didn't belong in a cold stone cell. It grated on me when she smiled and thanked the captors who brought her food, when she turned her head at their footsteps and smiled in welcome with a gentleness that hadn't broken.

Yet. I would break it, I would.

Her joy could not last.

So I showed her the misery that attends the enemies of Tash, and brought to her her own people, ready to be sacrificed on the altar of Tash for the edification of his soldiers. We took their bleeding battered bodies and threw them into her cell, to warn them Aslan had not saved their queen, and to force their queen to break at the proof of her own powerlessness.

And still she smiled. She took them in her arms, most of them crying to see their blind and scarred former queen. By the touch of her white and blistered hands she would wipe away their tears. And then, with her prayers and the songs they would sing together, she would not only smile, but send them smiling to their deaths.

Not one of them looked to Tash.

This, I could not, would not allow to continue. This could not be. I must break her, I must.

But I had no other means to do so. Pain had not, helplessness had not, time itself had not. I, Tehtori, Tash's bound soldier, was _powerless_ to take that smile.

Perhaps only Tash could.

I scheduled her own death, at the last day of the high feast of Tash, and brought her the news with grim satisfaction.

Even though she still smiled.

And, since she was a queen, I allowed her one last chance to turn from her demon and follow the god who bound me.

I brought her to Tash's secret rites, where those who have been faithful to him are allowed to stand before his statue and wish. And there, for the first time, she didn't smile.

There, sorrow vanquished the smile at the sound of the whispered wishes—wealth, power, slaves, a priesthood.

I did not understand.

Later I took her back to her cell, for her last night. She entered and went to the window—where she could no longer see out, but where she stood all the same.

"What would you have wished for?" I had to know. I could not predict her answer, this strange blindly devoted creature, but I did not need to. I only asked understanding for her answer. "If it was a god you worshiped, if you could have wished for anything for them, even from your lion, what would you have asked for? For your life, your freedom, your people? "

She turned fully towards the window, eyes blinded by bright lights and blade-scarred face still hidden. "It would not have been for my people." I frowned. "I would have wished for a warm, real smile on the faces of those wishing," she said, her tone even, a little sad. "A smile that wouldn't fade or break by events that came after." She paused, and turned around. Her green eyes held a grief far too heavy for a single soul to live through, a grief her own sorrows had never created. "But that is not possible for the lost."

I left. I was wordless.

I knew in her reckoning I was one of the lost, one who refused her Aslan's finding. I didn't want to know her lion.

She was executed the next morning, Tash having her blood, her disease of joy finally dead. But she was still smiling. I took her cold, bloodied body to the pit where we tossed the dead, and looked at her face before throwing her. It had a small smile. And the idea she'd held out, of a smile, a joy, so real it wasn't tarnished, chilled, or filled with darkness, grew bitter with time.

Bitter when Tisroc (who didn't live forever) called us out for one last battle, and I won, and stood before my great god Tash still bleeding from the cut my Narnian enemy had swept across my arm, offering the bodies of Tash's enemies. Offering the last of their organised army. And yet my god's smile wasn't warm.

None of the smiles were.

Not the priests', not the soldiers', not my god's.

The smile and its remembered warmth were never seen in Tash's temple again. Not until another war, with the remnants that banded together, hid, and struck from the shadows. Not till another capture, and another offered sacrifice. This time a soldier was brought to Tash's temple to break, not a queen. We needed the hiding places he knew. He was brought by Tash's followers, and they stood in the shadows of Tash's great room. The soldier, chained, blood smeared on cradled arm, looked up at the statue of the enemy god-and smiled.

And it was I, Tehtori, who trembled, I, the captor charged with breaking the spirit that smiled, breaking a smile that looked at death and smiled with joy still. And I knew I could not do it, I could not kill another smile.

I took the young soldier past the dungeons, past the outside metal cages in the courts, past the heated chains, past everything his former queen had lived through, and to her room, the room she'd left to meet her death. And the soldier looked around with puzzlement.

"I have seen your smile before." My voice was old, now, gravely with the roughness of the thousand threats it had uttered, and heavy as the gravestones placed on the deaths it had ordered. "And I know I cannot break it." I paused. "I would ask a question of you, though. Before you die."

The soldier's face was still confused—so young. But his eyes, looking steadfastly at me, were brave. Resolved. Death would not break that smile—just vanish it. I ached with the necessity.

"Ask?" The soldier's voice was so young. A boy's voice, high, clear, and ready for a challenge.

"Who gave to you your smile?"

"My...smile?"

"The smile that looks at the great god Tash and smiles without any loss or fear." I steadied my voice. "A warm, real smile."

There was an old, old, wisdom in the boy's look now, too old for a young soldier, too old for a wise grandmother—a wisdom that came with grief far too heavy for a single soul.

"I was given it first from Aslan," he said, steeling his body for the punch that came with any mention of the Lion. I delivered it, unbending. Tash was my god still. "Then my mother strengthened it, with love. And then," he added, quiet and sad, "Tash's soldiers completed it, when they took my parents' lives, and I learned great grief causes us to seek great joy, joy that doesn't die-for without it there is no longer a reason to live. Aslan met me in my grief and showed me that joy. And now," he added softly, "it's complete, because I will be going home." And he smiled again at the thought, a smile of light and grief, of loss held at bay by hope of great gain. And I shuddered, and the certainty within me cracked, for never in any of Tash's worshippers had there been a smile like that. Tash had too little generosity to inspire a hope like that.

I had given everything to Tash. Including the blood of those with Aslan-sent smiles. Including my heart.

Including my honor.

And Tash would never give anything like that.

Tash only gave a chain.

One more sacrifice, I thought. I drew my sword. Two more deaths, his and mine, and it can be over. He will go to Aslan, and I will go to Tash. And it will be over.

The soldier straightened, hands still chained, arm bent at his side and a waiting smile in his young eyes.

His young, green eyes.

Eyes that held sadness for the lost, joy for the found.

And the sword fell from my shaking hand, to fall at the feet of the captive, who looked down, then up, confusion still in his young-old face.

"Free me," I begged, my voice a rasp. "I need that joy." And the confused boy looked from his chained hands to the shaking ones of Tehtori, and reached his blood-stained hand to his chained captor, willing to give Aslan's help to any who would ask for it. To help those willing to be freed.

And Tash's chain that had bound me shattered at his touch.


End file.
